MemoryMen

by Michael Binkley

  Finally, he screwed up the courage and explained to her the real reason he was there was the investigation of the serial murders occurring in the LoDo area. Telling her about the tragedies first, he got around to asking her if she might remember anything about any of the parish boys who might have had shown any abnormal behavior when they were young. Particularly he asked gingerly lest he breach her sense of propriety, did she know of any that had displayed a sexual deviation? Did she remember anyone who had been demonstratively violent or aggressive? Or did have any idea of someone might have had a reason to act out such grisly murders?

  “Once I had mumbled out my questions, it was as if I had shut off a faucet,” Carly confessed to the group. As a detective, he had committed the ultimate blunder, he had gotten a most willing informant to clam up.

  She had stopped talking. He saw an emotional cloud cross her face. It wasn't the fact that she was upset by such an indelicate subject. That was not it. She was far too tough to be queasy over anything. He knew she knew something. He knew she knew something about the murders, or information that might be important. He had touched a real nerve. She ordered him to leave. Against his better judgement, with a resolve borne out of desperation…he didn’t. He sat there, his presence a demand for an answer. When he didn't leave the old woman actually got up and left herself. The last he saw of her that day was the flurry of her black robes as she nearly trotted down the hallway. The tattoo of her hard heels echoed off the walls as she fled away.

  “I went back the next day and tried to persuade her to talk to me. She refused. Finally, after three days of begging, pleading, and cajoling, I got her to open up.”

  Red-faced, Carly admitted his tactics were not above board. As he explained he looked directly at Diane, hoping she would understand, which she did. “I finally succeeded by laying a guilt trip on her. I told her that she might have information that could prevent innocent women from getting violated, from dying a death no one should be forced to face. To this day I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I actually told her that if she didn't speak up, those murders would be on her head. I told her, she would go to her grave knowing she might have had the chance to save a life and didn't. I had hit upon the only fear in the world she had, the fear of the Almighty. She feared no man, no woman, but the good Lord himself was another story. I don't know who she hated more at that moment, me or herself.”

  Diane broke the audience’s silence, “What else could you do? Right now if the Pope had information on our killings here, I would be willing to sweat him out under hot lights to get a viable lead.” The murmurs of assent around the room confirmed the group’s desperation was reaching the proportions Carly had felt back in Denver.

  With a quick sip of his drink, Carly continued on, grateful for the support. Over the years he had never lost a bit of the guilty feeling he garnered from the way he had treated the old nun. It had been a true example of the end justifying the means, but it still never sat well with him. To hear Diane and the others verbalize their own acceptance of what he had done he felt a bit vindicated in his own mind.

  “At that point she hung her head for a moment, when she lifted it I could tell she had been crying, as the tears were still fresh on her cheeks. She looked me straight in the eye with an unwavering stare. Then over the course of several hours, she told me about Dombrowski.”

  “It seems that back in the day, one of the kids at the parish school, a Petr Dombrowski had been involved in a sex scandal. Although there had not been the type of investigation you would expect today, it appeared that Dombrowski had been routinely molested by one of the parish priests. It had gone on for years before anyone found out. “

  The knowledge Carly had of Petr Dombrowski was akin to knowing his own life’s story. By the time the Denver murders had been solved, he knew as much about the killer as the killer did himself, maybe more as Carly had been able to put the psychology of it into perspective. He learned what made Dombrowski tick.

  “Petr Dombrowski had been a poor Polish kid living in the LoDo area with his mother. His father had been killed in an industrial accident at a meatpacking plant, when Petr was just a toddler. His mother had never remarried, never dated or anything like that, so she raised Petr by herself. It seems as if being a widow with a child was her cross to bear, a sort of self-inflicted martyrdom, so to speak. Maybe it was because Petr didn't have a father in a strongly patriarchal society, maybe it was the effect of a dominating mother, but whatever the reason, Petr was different from the start. Sister Anastacia recounted when he came to school early on he had been a quiet loner, always apart from the other kids.”

  “He fit the stereotype perfectly, where the profile of the killer as a Hispanic never really did match up,” Sully commented.

  Nodding his agreement at the astute observation, Carly carried on with his narration. “It wasn't until he was old enough to start serving as a choir boy that Petr displayed any drive or ambition, although the Sister told me it had been torturous trying to teach him the Latin he needed to know in order to serve Mass. In fact, he probably wouldn't have learned it had the assistant pastor not taken a special interest in Petr and tutored him privately.”

  “Although it was hard for Sister Anastacia to admit, the priest had a much different interest in Petr than just having the boy serve mass. It seems this priest had a history of pedophilia. It had been covered up for years by the church hierarchy, but Sister Anastacia said the other parish priests and the nuns had a pretty good idea about his background. Word gets around in such a closed society. Plus, they had seen it before.”

  Diane spoke up, knowing the problem so well. “There was a time in the last half of the century where this was a problem of huge proportions. Priests were shuttled from parish to parish, never allowed to stay long enough to generate a significant scandal, but always allowed to stay too long. Usually the one or two offended families could be quieted, in one way or another. The priest was then shuffled off to a new church somewhere until the problem came to the surface again. Sometimes a stay in a private psychiatric hospital might have interrupted the migration for a brief respite, but it never ended the abuse. Once back out, once back with the altar boys, the choir girls, and the catechism classes, the abuse started back up.”

  The specifics of this case were a classic example to Diane’s testimony, as Carly knew the information first hand. “This priest, Father Leonid Kaspian, made Petr Dombrowski into his personal toy. In some ways it was a remarkably clever if not stereotypical move for a pedophile. Here was a kid with no male role model, a quiet loner with no friends to share his experiences with, and a 'sainted' mother who was the epitome of the good Catholic woman...an utter sheep in the Catholic hierarchy.”

  “Wasn’t it true, his mother knew and helped cover it up?” Diane asked.

  Carly tried to hide his pleasure at knowing Diane had indeed studied the case. “You are right. The sadness of it all was Petr was doubly victimized. Despite his personal quirkiness as a kid, little Petr knew Father Kaspian had been doing wrong. Originally when he tried to tell his mother what was happening to him, she flew into a rage and beat him mercilessly. She had accused him of being a tool of the devil with his evil talk, trying to besmirch the good name of a holy father with his made up stories. Keep in mind she was from the old school, as she thought the priests could do no wrong and if they did it was anyone else's fault for tempting them. With the mother wishing to remain silent, refusing to believe her child, the priest could do what he wanted. With no apparent public problem, the church was satisfied with the priest's performance, assuming past aberrations had gone by the bye.”

  “Beyond the mother's tacit approval, Dombrowski became the perfect victim. He was not a bright child. He was slow in school. He had made almost no friends. He wasn't even attractive or cute as children go, he was short and built like the proverbial brick shit-house, almost Quasimodo-like. The kids ribbed him about his looks. He was desperate, almost starving for someone to befriend him, to lo
ve him. He was susceptible to the influence of an adult male, so by the time the priest started having his way with the kid, he was a complete outcast looking for any port in the social storm. Couple this with his mother's refusal to believe him or even seek out others to listen to the boy, and Petr Dombrowski became the perfect mark for a sexual predator.”

  “Imagine a kid, who's isolated from his peers, getting no self-esteem from his grades or his looks, abandoned by his mother to become a daily rape victim. He became all the more sullen, downcast and silent. It became a vicious circle, the more abuse he got, the more withdrawn he became, which created greater opportunity for abuse. The circle never ended.”

  “How did Sister Anastacia know all this?”

  “The crowning humiliation came when he's in the eighth grade. It seems another student caught him getting sodomized by the priest right in the church. Well hell, in a small close-knit community the whole affair becomes public knowledge in a matter of days. The priest gets off the hook because the bishop sent him packing, but poor little Petr was left to become even more of an object of ridicule and derision.”

  “Sister Anastacia told me that by the time the boy and his mother moved out of LoDo at the end of the school year, he had stopped talking all together. “

  “A psychiatric breakdown?” a detective near the door asked.

  “Yes. Absolutely, I suppose it is surprising he was not catatonic or didn’t act out sooner in life.”

  “What happened to him from the time he got caught with the priest and when the murders started?”

  “The good sister didn't know what happened to Dombrowski after he and his mother moved. She had heard his mother died a few years later. I had gotten the impression she hadn't liked the boy. Maybe she too wondered if some of his problems hadn't been his own fault. Maybe Petr had been looking a little too hard for a father figure. Maybe he wasn't a likable kid, who knows. Remember, Sister Anastacia also grew up in the era when priests could do no wrong. It probably was hard for her to admit that a priest could be so hideous, so demented.”

  “After months of getting nowhere, having no idea who the killer was, and unable to link the various facets together, I find a little old nun in Michigan who unraveled the whole case and handed it to me on a silver platter. It was a stunning turn of events. I had a suspect with specific knowledge of the crime scenes and a sure-fire motive for doing the killings, as well as the way they were done. After taking leave of Sister Anastacia, I thought that I couldn't get my phone out fast enough to call the Chief Inspector, to tell him what I found out.”

  Diane shook her head, and with an agonizing sigh, asked the rhetorical question, “I don’t suppose we can find a Sister Anastacia to help us here?”

  “Diane you never know. Strange things happen. Dombrowski was not an accident. The same could be said of your killer if he fits any profile at all. He is out there and he can be caught.” Carly added reassuringly. He knew the frustration Diane was feeling. While having Sister Anastacia dump the whole story on him had been a break, he had done a lot of detective work to get that break.

  Sully looked at Carly and asked him, “Did you get to make the collar?”

  Carly smiled. Sully was indeed a real detective. Every detective wants to be the one to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. Making the arrest was always the final piece. “According to our plan we decided that while I flew back, the Chief would find a judge to issue a warrant. We decided we wanted full arrest and search warrants, so we could have Dombrowski under lock and key while we gathered evidence. We didn't want to just bring him in for questioning and have a sharp attorney spring him immediately. We were afraid if we spooked this guy, we'd never see him again.”

  Carly marveled to himself at how scared they had been. The assumption that Dombrowski was a demented mastermind was at the forefront of the Denver police strategy. He smiled at how little they had actually known until they had the killer in custody.

  “I caught the first flight home, and by the time my plane hit Denver, the rest of the squad had a pretty good work up on Dombrowski. He lived alone north of the city on the outskirts of a small rural town called Brighton. He had never married, had no criminal record, and appeared to be somewhat of a recluse. Coincidentally enough, he was working as a blacksmith and tack repairman at a private polo club, so the tools for the homicides were readily at his disposal. Ironically, he even did some work for the local mounted police patrols, including Denver's finest, if you can image that. We assumed that was how he knew so much about our operations on the LoDo stakeouts. The cops were coming in with their horses and their equipment, talking to each other, talking to him. To think all the time the killer was right there taking it all in.”

  With a laugh, a detective asked the room, “So we should be checking out any carpenters the department is using?”

  A sharp look from Diane answered the question. She nodded toward Carly, anxious to hear his every word.

  “After we closed the case we found some frightening links with Dombrowski and the police. It was police mounted patrols that actually got little Petr interested in horses. After he and his mother moved, he had absolutely no friends. His mother had refused to let him go to church or school, afraid of what he would do or what kind of trouble he would get into next. He had a lot of time on his hands, which he spent wandering the suburban parks. Eventually he met one of the horse patrolmen who befriended the boy. Actually the cop took pity on Dombrowski because he thought he was handicapped, or developmentally disabled, or something like that since he didn't speak. Anyway, the cop let Petr pet the horse and even taught him a few things about grooming and caring for a horse. Eventually, Dombrowski parlayed that into a job at a stable. With his physique it was a logical next step for him to get into horse shoeing and general tack work. He was a powerful man, solid eastern European stock.”

  “That’s gruesome to think he was camped in your backyard all the time.”

  “You bet it was. It gets worse though. One other item that surfaced regarding his link with the Denver cops during his murder spree was a rumor that he actually was seen by one of the horse patrols on the night of a murder. Although it was never confirmed, rumor had it one of the horse patrols stopped him. He was in his van that he used for his blacksmithing work. Supposedly a cop stopped him coming out of a warehouse parking lot where one of the killings had taken place and wanted to know what he was doing. Dombrowski acted like he had been called downtown because one of the horses threw a shoe. The cop hadn't heard that, but while he had him there he actually had Dombrowski check out his horse anyway, then let him go. No one ever 'fessed' up to that rumor. They wouldn't have dared, but it made some sense.”

  “The task force met me at the airport. They had surveillance units in position at his home and work, while we waited for an arrest warrant. Based upon what amounted to third party hearsay, we had problems getting a judge to commit a signature on a warrant. So we turned part of an airport bar into a mini-squad room, while we waited for the police politicians to find the right judge to do them a favor. We didn't tell the local cops either, and caught a bit of flak for it eventually, but there was no way we wanted to create the opportunity for a leak, a blown arrest due to amateur heroism, or just a plain screw-up.”

  “Can you imagine, how in the world we felt? Hopefully you will soon, as the mix of emotions were incredible. The sense of jubilation, the waves of relief, yet at the same time the amount of anxiety the delay caused was immeasurable. For all of us this was the case of a lifetime, hell a thousand lifetimes in terms of police careers. Success meant the end of a long nightmare, failure meant accepting the responsibility of a city under siege.”

  “Tell us about it!” a chorus resounded in the office. Carly looked at their faces and knew they felt exactly as he had felt. The pressure was tantamount to war. People were dying and they were expected, no demanded, to stop it.

  “To top it off, our surveillance people couldn't find Dombrowski. He had called in sick
to his work, and he wasn't at his home. So we had his work and home staked out as surreptitiously as possible, but no one had seen hide nor hair of him. At that point in time, we didn't put out an all-points bulletin. An APB or BOLO might have aroused the media. You know how leaky things can get at a time like that. If it had gotten out over the wires, he'd get spooked for sure.”

  “We passed the time filling in the details from Sister Anastacia as we compiled a profile of a man who fit the description of a serial killer to a tee. He had a history of deviate sexual experience tied into a Catholic church setting, which links him with all the murder rituals. He worked with horses and thus was able to furnish himself with all the apparatus used in the murders. Finally, we know he had a castrating mother who didn't support him in his hour of need as a child. Plus, she had beat him to within an inch of his life thus giving him all the more motive to be angry and embittered towards women in general.”

  “Once we had an arrest warrant all set up, and no-knock search warrant for his home and vehicle in hand, we split into two teams, one to hit his job site, the other to go to his home. I honestly didn't think it was going to work, just because we wanted it so badly. I was afraid someone would screw up and miss a technicality like forgetting to read him his rights or he would see us and escape or something. “

  Fear of success in such a case was common. Detectives might live and breathe a case for months on end, only to find failure at the last moment. It happened, the system allowed it and in some ways encouraged it, all for the sake of assuring no innocent party was harmed.

  “Since I had found Sister Anastacia, which proved to be the biggest break in the case, I got first dibs on deciding which squad to be on. It was so hard to decide. I wanted to see this creep, look him in the eyes, right down to his soul if he had one. I wanted to know what made this man tick, what would possess someone to stare at the problems of his life and find such a solution.”